Is Afzal Guru the son-in-law of Congress, asks Gadkari

The BJP president says Manmohan Singh, P. Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee can never dream of becoming the Congress president as the post is reserved for Nehru-Gandhi family.

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PTI

Dehradun

July 9, 2010

UPDATED: July 9, 2010 09:46 IST

Claiming that the BJP is still a party with a difference, its president Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said his rise from an ordinary worker to the post of its chief was something that could happen in his party only and not in parties where the post is reserved for one family.

"I used to paste posters of BJP in a village of Maharashtra and now I have become the national President of the party. This can happen only in BJP because it is still a party with a difference," Gadkari said addressing the party's 'Janakrosh' rally here.

Such a 'phenomenal' rise of an ordinary worker cannot happen in Congress which is still plagued by dynastic rule, he said and threw a challenge to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other senior Congress leaders to try and head their party.

"Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee can never dream of becoming the president of the Congress as the post is reserved for Nehru-Gandhi family," he said.

Gadkari claimed that BJP is still a party with a difference while "Congress is a private limited firm."

"In true sense the internal democracy today exists only in BJP and I am proud to be associated with it," he said.

He said he is just an ordinary worker and was merely trying to hold the responsibility of a captain.

"A captain is successful only when all the members of the team play well with full force," he said.

Gadkari also accused the UPA of not doing anything on the issue of Chinese intrusion into India.

In this regard, he said he constituted a high-level party team which recently visited the border areas along China where they found incidents of several Chinese intrusion.

Similarly, he said Bangladeshis are intruding into the country from Assam side and the government despite being aware of this is sleeping over the issue as it looks upon them as a vote bank.

Criticising the UPA for delaying the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, the BJP President asked, "Is Afzal Guru the son-in-law of Congress? Why is he being given special treatment?"

Gadkari also slammed the UPA government for curtailing the Concessional Industrial Package to Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh by three years and said if the BJP comes to power in 2014, it would restore the package with retrospective effect.

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